Swine flu pandemic?

Premier Occupational Healthcare can assist

Guidance for employers.

As Kent's leading Occupational Healthcare provider, Premier’s role is to promote the health and wellbeing of your workforce and to provide clients business’ with the information required to continue to operate as efficiently and effectively as possible. With the World Health Organisation announcing alert level 5, it is important that businesses are aware of the possible effects of a pandemic.

Pandemic flu is an outbreak of influenza that affects many countries and potentially millions of people. A pandemic therefore has high social and economic implications. Organisations / employers should therefore make contingency plans for such an event - both to encourage the health and welfare of your employees but also to plan what action should be taken in the event of a local outbreak of the swine flu in order to minimise the effects upon your business.

Occupational health is concerned with the fitness of employees to perform their work duties safely and effectively without endangering the business or other employees. Premier Occupational Healthcare with its clinical and specialist expertise can play a vital role in helping employers understand and care for the needs of their employees, enabling the business to reduce absence levels and optimise employee performance and productivity. Premier can assist you as your occupational health advisor in making contingency arrangements and in dealing with the effects of a possible flu pandemic. Some of our senior clinical staff already work within public authorities at Gold Command level and thus are an integral part of planning for such events.

We set out below some basic factors you should consider when making your contingency plans:

How to cope with widespread cuts in supplies, transport and other service provisions upon.
Identify possibilities for, and suitability of, remote working.
Contingency arrangements for the loss of ‘key players’ or tacit knowledge.
Identify groups of employees most at risk from school closures, travel disruptions etc and make contingency plans to cope.
Review absence policies to take into account the circumstances of the pandemic e.g. absence due to voluntary quarantine, notification procedure in relation to display of flu symptoms, consideration of alternative working patterns and the implications on pay arrangements.
Improvements in cleaning procedures- concentration on hard surfaces and wet dusting.
Consideration and encouragement of basic hygiene principles- Hand washing, (alcohol hand gels where water and soap facilities are limited), use and disposal arrangements of tissues.
Consideration of policy on overseas travel, including consideration of quarantine periods for returning travellers.

Premier can help your business prepare for this emergency as well as providing other services including:

Sickness absence management
Pre employment medical screening
Health surveillance
Company medical Officer
Telephone helpline schemes
Health screening
Stress management programmes
Health promotion programmes
Rehabilitation services
Wellbeing solutions

Don't delay call us now to see how we can help - 01303 298100.